Jeanne Marecek
Biographic Data
| ID | 210901 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jeanne Marecek |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jeanne |
| FAMILY NAME | Marecek |
| SIGNATURE | MARECEK J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Swarthmore College |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2486-0924 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 72 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 670 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 71 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1973 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Gendered Antecedents and Consequences of Young Women’s Suicidal Acts in Sri Lanka
In the late 1990s, Sri Lanka had a record rate of suicide deaths. Since then, deaths have decreased dramatically due to the restriction of lethal agrochemicals. The number of nonfatal suicidal acts, however, remains extraordinarily high. A disproportionate number of these cases are adolescents and young adults-mainly girls and young women. This paper offers a close look at adolescent girls in rural Sri Lanka who had engaged in nonfatal suicidal a…
Celebrating 30 years of Feminism & Psychology
Feminism & Psychology ( F&P) was launched in 1991 with a sense of possibility, enthusiasm and excitement as well as a sense of urgent need – to critique and reconstruct mainstream psychology (theory, research methods, and clinical practice). Thirty years have now passed since the first issue was produced. Thirty volumes with three or four issues have been published each year, thanks to the efforts of many. On the occasion of F&P’s 30th anniversar…
Suman Fernando, Institutional racism in psychiatry and clinical psychology
Transnational Feminisms and Psychologies
Drawing from a larger study of non fatal suicidal behavior in Sri Lanka, we examine the narratives of two young women and their mothers following the daughter’s suicide-like act. These accounts offer insights into how the moral person is constructed in Sri Lanka and, particularly, what it means to be a good daughter and a good woman in Sri Lanka. We reflect on the implications that radically different conceptions of the self and personhood have f…
Embodied shame and gendered demeanours in young women in Sri Lanka
In South Asia, shame is valued as a virtue and a means of social control, particularly for women. For Sri Lankan women, shame ( læjja-baya) denotes modesty, purity, innocence, and self-effacement. For unmarried girls, sexual improprieties—rumoured or real—threaten loss of respectability and jeopardise a girl’s marriageability and her family’s honour. We investigated the dynamics of shame and norms of propriety in adolescent girls’ lives by re-ana…
A History of the Future
Writing some 40 years ago, Carolyn Wood Sherif left a legacy of critical reflections on the fledgling field of feminist psychology. Here I read her work, not as a record of the past, but with an eye to the future. In the two works I consider in this essay, Sherif offered a scrutiny of the knowledge-producing practices and social relations of the psychology of her time, as well as an agenda for feminist research practice. I draw on Ludwik Fleck’s …
Mary Brown Parlee (1943–2018)
Mary Brown Parlee was a pioneer feminist scholar who made noteworthy and enduring contributions to the study of the menstrual cycle. Parlee died in Somerville, Massachusetts, on June 27, 2018, following a hemorrhagic stroke. Throughout her career, Parlee devoted considerable energy to educating the public about psychology and to correcting misapprehensions about women that the discipline had promulgated. In the late 1970s, she served as an associ…
Gender, Sex, and Sexualities
This volume is a compendium of conceptual frameworks and associated research approaches used for inquiry into gender, sex, and sexualities. It is suitable for use as an advanced textbook. Part I (Emerging Frameworks: Beyond Binaries) includes Magnusson and Marecek on meanings of sex and gender; Warner and Shields on intersectionality theory; Hegarty, Ansara, and Barker on nonbinary gender identities; and Gowaty on flexibility as a core evolutiona…
Gender, Dispositions, Peer Relations, and Identity
This chapter considers possible ways that peer relations, group identity, and dispositional preferences are interrelated and contribute to children’s gender development. The author advances an integrative theoretical model of gender development that bridges complementary theories by linking sex-related dispositions and physical characteristics to the process of assimilation within same-gender peer groups. Research suggests some (but not all) chil…
Control and protect
Feminist Psychology
Feminist psychology is a subfield of psychology concerned with gender, sex categories, and sexualities. It includes both academic researchers and practitioners (i.e., psychotherapists and counselors). Feminist scholarship is often fueled by a commitment to social justice. Feminist psychologists have challenged cultural beliefs about innate female nature, and also invidious stereotypes about various groups of women. It has brought to light the liv…
On Making a Difference
Feminism & Psychology
Abortion embedded and embodied in social relations
Abortion in legal, social, and healthcare contexts
Blowing in the Wind
Psychotherapy came in for a drubbing by the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1960s. Indeed, some movement members declared that Feminist Therapy was an oxymoron. Despite the antipathy, feminists in the mental health professions borrowed practices, ethical ideals, principles, and goals from the Women’s Liberation Movement to create innovative models of therapy. This progressive impetus came to an abrupt halt with the sweeping re-medicalization o…
Out of place? Gender relations in a college fitness center
We turn attention to ordinary gym users and everyday social relations in athletic facilities. Our study concerned college students in the US and their experiences in the university’s fitness center. Using a critical incident procedure, we gathered brief accounts of ‘uncomfortable’ experiences in day-to-day workout sessions. Drawing on the theories of Bruner, Ochs, Labove, and Bamberg, we analysed how these accounts drew upon and reaffirmed normat…
Introducing State of the Discipline Papers
The editors of Feminism & Psychology are delighted to introduce the first of our State of the Discipline papers. Twenty-five years have passed since the establishment of FP point out areas of conceptual and methodological debate among feminist scholars; open up the topic to further scrutiny and new ways of understanding; and promote nuanced work in the field. We hope that the State of the Discipline papers will accomplish a number of aims. We int…
Robert Whitaker and Lisa Cosgrove, Psychiatry under the influence
Invited Reflection
Doing Interview-based Qualitative Research
For many students, the experience of learning about and using qualitative methods can be bewildering. This book is an accessible step-by-step guide to conducting interview-based qualitative research projects. The authors discuss the 'hows' and 'whys' of qualitative research, showing readers the practices as well as the principles behind them. The book first describes how to formulate research questions suited to qualitative inquiry. It then discu…
Feminism & Psychology Special Issue
Feminism & Psychology going forward
Reflection is fundamental to all feminist practice, and the editorials in Feminism & Psychology (FP and in enthusiasm and excitement about the future and what it may be possible to achieve’ (Wilkinson et al., 1991: 5). Seventeen years later, Nicola Gavey and Virginia Braun took over as editors. Acknowledging its ‘radical promise and sense of transformative possibility’ (Gavey and Braun, 2008: 5), they envisaged that F&P would play a ‘leading role…
Critical cultural awareness
The number of psychologists whose work crosses cultural boundaries is increasing. Without a critical awareness of their own cultural grounding, they risk imposing the assumptions, concepts, practices, and values of U.S.-centered psychology on societies where they do not fit, as a brief example from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami shows. Hermeneutic thinkers offer theoretical resources for gaining cultural awareness. Culture, in the hermeneutic view…
DSM-5 and beyond
The history of critical feminist engagement with psychiatry is a long one. It stretches at least to 1892, the year when Charlotte Perkins Gilman published her autobiographical novella, The Yellow Wallpaper. Gilman delivered a searing indictment of the ‘rest cure’ prescribed for her by Dr S Weir Mitchell. Some 70 years later, Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) blasted Freudian ideas about women and femininity, ideas that held sway among psychi…
The meaning of difference
Behavior as seen by the actor and as seen by the observer
Jones and Nisbett proposed that actors are inclined to attribute their behavior to situational causes, while observers of the same behavior are inclined to attribute it to dispositional qualities—stable attitudes and traits—of the actor. Some demonstrational studies consistent with this hypothesis were described. College student observers were found to (a) assume that actors would behave in the future in ways similar to those they had just witnes…
When stereotypes hurt
Psychology Reconstructs The Female
Recent work on the psychology of gender is pluralistic, stemming from varied specialty areas within psychology, grounded in several intellectual frameworks, and reflecting a spectrum of feminist perspectives. This article is a critical appraisal of diverse approaches to the study of women and gender. It first describes prefeminist or “womanless” psychology, then analyzes four co-existing frameworks that have generated recent research. The four fr…
Critical cultural awareness
The number of psychologists whose work crosses cultural boundaries is increasing. Without a critical awareness of their own cultural grounding, they risk imposing the assumptions, concepts, practices, and values of U.S.-centered psychology on societies where they do not fit, as a brief example from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami shows. Hermeneutic thinkers offer theoretical resources for gaining cultural awareness. Culture, in the hermeneutic view…
I'm Not Going to Be a Girl”
This study examines the peer relations and emotion practices of adolescent boys in light of their expectations and assumptions about masculinity. We carried out semistructured interviews with middle-class and upper-middle-class boys from an independent high school. The boys reported that they assiduously avoided displays of emotional or physical pain and disparaged such displays in other boys. They tied tough, stoic self-presentations to manlines…
New Versions of Victims
Memphis in Memphis, Tennessee.She has written in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography about using a "layered account" to examine and understand child sexual abuse.She is currently in the process of conducting life-history interviews with adult female and male subjects who have experienced childhood sexual abuse
Gender in the Gym
DSM-5 and beyond
The history of critical feminist engagement with psychiatry is a long one. It stretches at least to 1892, the year when Charlotte Perkins Gilman published her autobiographical novella, The Yellow Wallpaper. Gilman delivered a searing indictment of the ‘rest cure’ prescribed for her by Dr S Weir Mitchell. Some 70 years later, Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) blasted Freudian ideas about women and femininity, ideas that held sway among psychi…
Sex-Role Identity, Sex-Role Behavior, and Satisfaction in Heterosexual, Lesbian, and Gay Male Couples
Partners in 10 heterosexual, 10 lesbian, and 5 gay male couples completed the BSRI and a questionnaire about their demographic backgrounds, sex-role differentiation in their relationships, and satisfaction with the relationship. Members of heterosexual couples were more sex-typed on the BSRI and more sex-role differentiated in their behavior than members of lesbian couples. Members of gay male couples appeared the most sex-typed in their identiti…
Feminist Theory, Feminist Psychology
A selection of recent (post-1980) works on feminist theory and method, this bibliography includes literature from psychology and other social sciences, feminist studies, and philosophy of science. The first of its four sections concerns epistemology and metatheory. The second lists works that offer reformulations or critical analyses of key concepts in gender studies; many of these are grounded in social constructionist and feminist standpoint ep…
Invited Reflection
I drank it to put an end to me
Sri Lanka experienced a spiral of suicides in the 1980s and 1990s, with deaths rising to nearly 48 per 100,000 in 1995. Although reported rates of suicide have declined since then, the incidence of suicide and deliberate self-harm remains high, especially among young people. Data on hospital admissions showed that the number of adolescent girls admitted for deliberate self-harm more than doubled between 2001 and 2007. We conducted in-depth interv…
A Short History of the Future
Since the 19th century, feminists have criticized the mental health establishment and its treatment of women. Issues include the sexist use of psychoanalytic concepts and psychiatric diagnoses, the misuse of medication, and sexual misconduct in therapy. Feminists have also called attention to psychological problems arising from gender inequality in everyday life. Physical and sexual abuse of women is of special concern. Feminist innovations in th…
Gender Roles in the Relationships of Lesbians and Gay Men
Recent research on gay male and lesbian couples suggests that traditional gender-role-playing sometimes occurs in their relationships, though it is less common than in the relationships of heterosexuals. This paper briefly explores three issues raised by these findings. First, we consider reasons why partners of the same gender might engage in gender-role-playing. Second we discuss the processes that might be involved in allocating masculine and …
The Global Is Local
IV. Asking the Right Questions
Factors Influencing Women's Participation in Consciousness-Raising Groups
The results of a nationwide survey point out both commonality and diversity in the experiences of women in consciousness-raising (CR) groups. Women commonly joined CR groups through women's organizations, and their most important reason for entering CR was to examine women's roles and experiences. Most groups encouraged self-disclosure and openness and discouraged domineering and lack of commitment. The backgrounds and personal characteristics of…
Embodied shame and gendered demeanours in young women in Sri Lanka
In South Asia, shame is valued as a virtue and a means of social control, particularly for women. For Sri Lankan women, shame ( læjja-baya) denotes modesty, purity, innocence, and self-effacement. For unmarried girls, sexual improprieties—rumoured or real—threaten loss of respectability and jeopardise a girl’s marriageability and her family’s honour. We investigated the dynamics of shame and norms of propriety in adolescent girls’ lives by re-ana…
A History of the Future
Writing some 40 years ago, Carolyn Wood Sherif left a legacy of critical reflections on the fledgling field of feminist psychology. Here I read her work, not as a record of the past, but with an eye to the future. In the two works I consider in this essay, Sherif offered a scrutiny of the knowledge-producing practices and social relations of the psychology of her time, as well as an agenda for feminist research practice. I draw on Ludwik Fleck’s …
Abortion in legal, social, and healthcare contexts
Feminism & Psychology going forward
Reflection is fundamental to all feminist practice, and the editorials in Feminism & Psychology (FP and in enthusiasm and excitement about the future and what it may be possible to achieve’ (Wilkinson et al., 1991: 5). Seventeen years later, Nicola Gavey and Virginia Braun took over as editors. Acknowledging its ‘radical promise and sense of transformative possibility’ (Gavey and Braun, 2008: 5), they envisaged that F&P would play a ‘leading role…
V. Mad Housewives, Double Shifts, Mommy Tracks and Other Invented Realities
Social Change, Positive Mental Health, and Psychological Androgyny
Recent changes in the timing of life stages, the length of the lifespan, labor force participation, marriage and fertility are described. It is argued that highly-differentiated sex-role orientations are less suited to current conditions than are androgynous orientations, especially for women. If this is true, then developing androgynous sex-role orientations may promote greater adaptability and positive mental health
Transnational Feminisms and Psychologies
Drawing from a larger study of non fatal suicidal behavior in Sri Lanka, we examine the narratives of two young women and their mothers following the daughter’s suicide-like act. These accounts offer insights into how the moral person is constructed in Sri Lanka and, particularly, what it means to be a good daughter and a good woman in Sri Lanka. We reflect on the implications that radically different conceptions of the self and personhood have f…
Behavior as seen by the actor and as seen by the observer
Jones and Nisbett proposed that actors are inclined to attribute their behavior to situational causes, while observers of the same behavior are inclined to attribute it to dispositional qualities—stable attitudes and traits—of the actor. Some demonstrational studies consistent with this hypothesis were described. College student observers were found to (a) assume that actors would behave in the future in ways similar to those they had just witnes…
When stereotypes hurt
Women as TV Experts
Three-year study shows more women experts selling products for women but still backed up by the “known quantity” of an authoritative male voice-over
Rights of clients, responsibilities of therapists
In this paper four situations illustrative of the problem of ethical content of the client/therapist relationship are presented: (1) providing clients with information to make informed decisions about therapy; (2) using contracts in therapy; (3) responding to clients' challenges to therapists' competence; and (4) handling clients' complaints
Social Change, Positive Mental Health, and Psychological Androgyny
Recent changes in the timing of life stages, the length of the lifespan, labor force participation, marriage and fertility are described. It is argued that highly-differentiated sex-role orientations are less suited to current conditions than are androgynous orientations, especially for women. If this is true, then developing androgynous sex-role orientations may promote greater adaptability and positive mental health
Sex-Role Identity, Sex-Role Behavior, and Satisfaction in Heterosexual, Lesbian, and Gay Male Couples
Partners in 10 heterosexual, 10 lesbian, and 5 gay male couples completed the BSRI and a questionnaire about their demographic backgrounds, sex-role differentiation in their relationships, and satisfaction with the relationship. Members of heterosexual couples were more sex-typed on the BSRI and more sex-role differentiated in their behavior than members of lesbian couples. Members of gay male couples appeared the most sex-typed in their identiti…
Gender Roles in the Relationships of Lesbians and Gay Men
Recent research on gay male and lesbian couples suggests that traditional gender-role-playing sometimes occurs in their relationships, though it is less common than in the relationships of heterosexuals. This paper briefly explores three issues raised by these findings. First, we consider reasons why partners of the same gender might engage in gender-role-playing. Second we discuss the processes that might be involved in allocating masculine and …
Factors Influencing Women's Participation in Consciousness-Raising Groups
The results of a nationwide survey point out both commonality and diversity in the experiences of women in consciousness-raising (CR) groups. Women commonly joined CR groups through women's organizations, and their most important reason for entering CR was to examine women's roles and experiences. Most groups encouraged self-disclosure and openness and discouraged domineering and lack of commitment. The backgrounds and personal characteristics of…
Counseling adolescents with problem pregnancies
The meaning of difference
Thinking about postmodernism and gender theory
Thinking about postmodernism and gender theory
The authors respond to critiques by J. C. Stanley, B. B. Barratt and B. R. Straus, and J. Walkup (see PA, Vol 77:26; 18; and 31, respectively) regarding their article (see record 1988-31397-001) on gender theory, postmodernism, and psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved)
Feminist Theory, Feminist Psychology
A selection of recent (post-1980) works on feminist theory and method, this bibliography includes literature from psychology and other social sciences, feminist studies, and philosophy of science. The first of its four sections concerns epistemology and metatheory. The second lists works that offer reformulations or critical analyses of key concepts in gender studies; many of these are grounded in social constructionist and feminist standpoint ep…
Psychology Reconstructs The Female
Recent work on the psychology of gender is pluralistic, stemming from varied specialty areas within psychology, grounded in several intellectual frameworks, and reflecting a spectrum of feminist perspectives. This article is a critical appraisal of diverse approaches to the study of women and gender. It first describes prefeminist or “womanless” psychology, then analyzes four co-existing frameworks that have generated recent research. The four fr…
Women Analyze Women in France, England, and the United States . Elaine Hoffman Baruch , Lucienne J. Serrano Don't Blame Mother
A Short History of the Future
Since the 19th century, feminists have criticized the mental health establishment and its treatment of women. Issues include the sexist use of psychoanalytic concepts and psychiatric diagnoses, the misuse of medication, and sexual misconduct in therapy. Feminists have also called attention to psychological problems arising from gender inequality in everyday life. Physical and sexual abuse of women is of special concern. Feminist innovations in th…
Women and Self-Help Culture
IV. Asking the Right Questions
Gender, politics, and psychology's ways of knowing
Recent work on the psychology of gender has emphasized comparisons of men and women. Such comparisons rest on a view of gender as an individual difference or psychological attribute. Feminist theorists have challenged this view as limited and inadequate. In place of it, a variety of alternative conceptions of gender are emerging. These conceptions shift the focus of analysis from the individual to interpersonal and institutional arenas. Moreover,…
Through a Glass Darkly
Working Between Worlds
We invite social psychologists in the United States to join with psychologists in other countries and with researchers in other disciplines to include qualitative approaches in their research repertory. Several classic studies in social psychology used field-based qualitative approaches, yet in recent decades, these ways of working have been on the margins of American social psychology. We explore what a qualitative stance offers and entails, giv…
Putting Politics into Practice
A distinctive feature of feminist therapy is its insistence on bringing power into discussions of therapy and mental health. Using the framework of discourse analysis, we ask how feminist therapists talk about power. What linguistic resources do they employ to construct accounts of power in therapy? Drawing on interviews with three experienced feminist therapists, we trace how their language practices highlight some dimensions of power and concea…
Chapter Seven. Trauma Talk in Feminist Clinical Practice
Transforming the Margin into a Threshold
New Versions of Victims
Memphis in Memphis, Tennessee.She has written in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography about using a "layered account" to examine and understand child sexual abuse.She is currently in the process of conducting life-history interviews with adult female and male subjects who have experienced childhood sexual abuse
Psychology (63 works) · Sociology (44 works) · Social Psychology (30 works) · Gender Studies (29 works) · Psychoanalysis (28 works) · Gender Studies (24 works) · Social Psychology (22 works) · Political science (18 works) · Epistemology (17 works) · Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology (16 works)